Holocaust Day, April 29, 2003, will be the 60th anniversary of
the outbreak of the revolt in the Warsaw Ghetto.

The revolt, the first uprising against the Germans in World
War II, and the most prominent act of Jewish resistance to the
German slaughter of the Jews of Europe, has become a symbol of
heroism. It was a desperate battle that pitted a small group of
Jewish fighters against the might of the German Army, a battle
for the dignity of man and the honor of the Jewish people.

Intense fighting in the ghetto between Jewish fighters and
German army units assisted by Ukrainian and Latvian militias and
Polish policemen lasted for about a month, while Jewish fighters
who continued to hide in the many underground bunkers that had
been built in the ghetto continued fighting for several weeks
thereafter. The commander of the German assault on the ghetto was
SS-Gruppenfuehrer Maj.-Gen. Juergen Stroop. He "declared
victory" over the Jews on the evening of May 16 and to
celebrate his victory he dynamited the great synagogue on
Tomalckie Street, abandoned by its Jewish worshipers.

What remained of the ghetto - after the Germans had used
flame-throwers to burn down many of the buildings - was
dynamited, leaving only a heap of rubble where the ghetto that
had once housed more than half a million Jews once stood.

The revolt was not one of the major battles of World War II -
not Stalingrad or the Allied landing in Normandy.

But it is remembered as one of the most significant events of
that war. It occurred when the war had reached the stage that
Winston Churchill referred to as "the end of the
beginning" - after Montgomery's defeat of Rommel in the
Western Desert, after the American landing in North Africa, after
the surrender of Field Marshal von Paulus at Stalingrad, while
Allied bombers were raiding the cities of Germany night and day.

The German murder machine had by this time already moved into
high gear. The Treblinka gas chambers were operating at full
capacity. More than 300,000 of Warsaw's Jews had been dispatched
there from the Warsaw Ghetto in the summer of 1942 in the
"Great Liquidation."

News of the German campaign to exterminate the Jews in the
areas under their rule had reached Washington and London. On
August 1, 1942, while the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto was
already in progress, Gerhard Riegner, the representative of the
World Jewish Congress in Switzerland, learned from a German
industrialist that Hitler had ordered the extermination of the
Jews of Europe, and that they were to be gassed. A week later,
after having sought further confirmation of the information he
had received, Riegner asked the US vice-consul in Geneva to
transmit a cable with the information to Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in
New York, head of the American Jewish Congress. The message
reached Wise only at the end of August.

On December 8, 1942, Wise, at the head of a delegation of
American Jews met with president Franklin D. Roosevelt in order
to put the awesome information before him. It was not the first
time that Roosevelt had came face to face with news of the tragic
fate of European Jewry. Jan Karski, a member of the Polish
underground, working as a courier for the Polish
government-in-exile in London, visited the Warsaw Ghetto in
August of 1942, before succeeding in smuggling himself to London
and from there continued to Washington.

In November 1942 Karski met Anthony Eden, the British foreign
secretary, in London, and thereafter he met with Roosevelt in
Washington. He described the horrendous circumstances of Polish
Jewry to both leaders, but the response in London and Washington
was, if not indifference, then apathy. The Allied leaders had
greater concerns than the survival of the Jewish people.

WHEN THE revolt in the ghetto broke out in April 1943, all of
Warsaw was aware of the fighting. The news of the revolt was
transmitted to the Allied capitals by the Polish underground, but
no help came for the Jewish fighters - not from the US or
England, nor from the Soviet Union; not even a sign of
recognition or an acknowledgement by the Allies of the battle
raging in the ghetto. The Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto
were unknown soldiers, isolated from the world. Only two years
later, after the end of the war, did their valiant battle receive
universal recognition.

Two organizations of Jewish fighters had been preparing
themselves for the revolt. Best known by the initials of their
Polish names, they were: ZOB (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa) led by
Mordechai Anielewicz, and ZZW (Zidowski Zwiazek Woskowy) led by
Pawel Frenkel. Considerable rivalry and even animosity existed
between the two groups, all attempts at uniting them having
failed. Only a semblance of coordination between them was
established prior to the revolt.

The formation of ZOB had been preceded by an anti-fascist bloc
formed by Socialist Zionist youth groups in the ghetto in March
1943. In July 1943, after the start of the "Great
Liquidation," a Jewish combat organization, ZOB, was formed
by the Socialist Zionist youth groups, Hashomer Hatzair and Dror
Hehalutz, and the General Zionist youth group, Akiva. They were
soon joined by the other Socialist Zionist youth groups in the
ghetto, as well as by the anti-Zionist Socialist Bund, and the
communists.

ZOB was organized into individual squads, each composed of
fighters all belonging to the same youth movement. It was felt
that the ideological affiliation and familiarity between members
would strengthen the fighting ability of each fighting unit.
Anielewicz was chosen as the commander, to be supported by a
staff composed of representatives of the major constituent
groups, the leading members of which were Yitzhak Cukierman of
Hehalutz-Dror, and Marek Edelman of the Bund. According to
Cukierman, ZOB's deputy commander, its entire weapons store at
the beginning consisted of one revolver. ZOB had great difficulty
in acquiring the weapons needed for the revolt, receiving only
minimal assistance from the Polish underground.

Just how difficult the situation was is demonstrated by a
letter Anielewicz wrote on March 13, 1943 to the Polish
underground Home Army command: "Are we prepared? Materially,
very badly. Of the 49 pieces allocated to us, only 36 are
serviceable, and this because of lack of ammunition This is a
catastrophic situation." On the fourth day of the uprising
he wrote to Cukierman, who at the time was the ZOB's liaison
outside the ghetto with the Polish underground, that the pistols
were of little importance and that "we badly need grenades,
rifles, machine-guns, and explosives."

ZZW WAS headed by Pawel Frenkel of the Revisionist youth
movement Betar; his deputies were David Apfelbaum and Leon Rodal.
It was better trained and better equipped. It had been founded
almost immediately after the German conquest of western Poland
and included a number of men who had served with the Polish Army
as officers during the German invasion in September 1939, as well
as members of Betar who had received military training in the
cells established by the IZL in Poland prior to the war.

Apfelbaum had been a Polish officer and through his
acquaintance with Major Henryk Iwanski, who had commanded his
regiment during the battles against the invading German army, he
had already arranged the first acquisition of arms for ZZW at the
end of 1939. Iwanski was a member of the Polish underground
Security Corps (KB), which subsequently became a part of the
Polish underground Home Army (AK). He and his unit assisted ZZW
in the training and acquisition of weapons and ammunition and
participated together with ZZW fighters in some of the battles of
the revolt.

Frenkel had succeeded in establishing contact with Captain
Cezary Ketling, one of the leaders of another Polish underground
group, PLAN, which also provided assistance to ZZW. ZZW had
succeeded in digging two tunnels under the ghetto walls providing
contact with the outside and allowing smuggling of arms into the
ghetto.

Thus, when the revolt broke out on April 19, 1943, ZZW was
better prepared than ZOB.

Anielewicz, in his early 20s at the time, had been a leading
member of Hashomer Hatzair in Poland and had continued
educational work among his movement's members under the German
occupation up to the time he took command of ZOB. He had had no
prior military training, but was endowed with leadership
qualities that made him the obvious choice to command ZOB.
Frenkel, also in his early 20s, had been a member of Betar in
Warsaw for a number of years before the war and received some
military training in one of the IZL cells. To both organizations
it seemed obvious that leadership under the circumstances must be
entrusted to young fighters rather than to the older political
leadership that was present in the ghetto.

ONLY THOSE who are acquainted with the fratricidal animosity
that characterized the relationship in the years leading up to
the war, between the Socialist Zionist parties and the
Revisionist Zionist party headed by Zeev Jabotinsky, can begin to
comprehend the inability or unwillingness to unite the two Jewish
military organizations at that desperate time. The movements that
founded ZOB and its precursor organization, the anti-fascist
bloc, considered Betar to be a semi-fascist movement, whereas
they saw themselves as representing all the workers' parties and
progressive movements in the ghetto.

The Socialist Zionist movements, like Hashomer Hatzair,
Hehalutz-Dror, Left Poalei Zion, and Poalei Zion, found it easier
to bring the anti-Zionist Bund and the communists into their
ranks than to unite with ZZW. They all seem to have been united
in their disdain for the Revisionist youth. Edelman, after the
war, referred to the ZZW as "a gang of porters, smugglers,
and thieves." Cukierman, as well, spoke of them in most
uncomplimentary terms, claiming that they had cooperated with
reactionary Polish organizations. The initiative undertaken by
senior Revisionist leaders in the ghetto to unite the two
fighting movements was rejected by the ZOB.

AFTER THE "Great Liquidation," only about 60,000
Jews remained in the ghetto. They now lived in three unconnected
Jewish sectors, the central sector that contained the houses
inhabited by part of the surviving Jewish population, and two
German workshop areas where Jewish slave-laborers were producing
goods for the German war machine - the Brush Workshops and the
Toebbens-Schultz factories. In each of these areas there were ZOB
and ZZW fighting units. The ZOB units at the Brush Workshops were
commanded by Edelman. The headquarters of both organizations were
located in the central sector: ZOB was headed by Anielewicz at
Mila Street 39, ZZW headed by Frenkel, Apfelbaum, and Rodal at
Muranowski Street 7. They were prepared to meet the German
assault.

On orders from SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler to bring
about the total liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, SS
Obergruppenfuehrer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krueger, the higher SS and
police leader of the general-government the Germans had
established in occupied Poland, charged SS Oberfuehrer Ferdinand
von Sammern-Frankenegg, commander of the SS and the police in the
Warsaw district, with the task.

On the morning of April 19, 1943, Sammern-Frankenberg led his
force into the central ghetto area. Ambushed by ZOB fighters as
they entered the ghetto, the Germans fled in panic.
Sammern-Frankenbergg was promptly removed and the following day,
SS Gen. Stroop was in charge of the German attack on the ghetto.

Only scant documentation is available regarding the fighting
in the following days and weeks. Dr.Yosef Kermish, at the time
head of the Yad Vashem archives, wrote in 1965 in his preface to
a collection of documents on the Warsaw Ghetto revolt: "As
for the revolt itself and the actual preparations for it, the
Jewish and Polish sources are regretfully not sufficiently
adequate . As for the development of the revolt, these sources
only describe the street-fighting of the first days that occurred
in the area, and unfortunately even these reports are no more
than fragmentary What is missing in the Jewish and Polish sources
regarding the revolt must necessarily be complemented from German
sources that were written by the enemy himself. The most
important of the German documents regarding the revolt are the
reports of SS Brigadefuehrer Juergen Stroop, that were written at
the time of the events themselves".

STROOP WAS the archetypal Nazi - a sadistic anti-Semite who
took joy in hunting Jews, whom he considered sub-humans. He
remained unrepentant right up to his execution in Warsaw, after
being convicted of war crimes. In the Warsaw Mokotow prison
awaiting his trial, he regaled his cellmates with stories of how
he had succeeded in liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto. One of them,
Kazimierz Moczarski, a Pole accused of activity against the
Polish Communist regime, relates in his book Conversations With
The Hangman, that when describing how he had dynamited the great
synagogue on Tlomackie Street his eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

"What a wonderful sight! I called out Heil Hitler! and
pressed the button. A terrific explosion brought flames right up
to the clouds. The colors were unbelievable. An unforgettable
allegory of the triumph over Jewry. The Warsaw Ghetto has ceased
to exist. Because that is what Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler
wanted."

Stroop was awarded the Iron Cross first class, for his
suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt.

Stroop sent daily reports on the action in the ghetto to
Krueger. A summary report was written by Stroop on May 16 and
read on May 18 in Krakow before an assembly of SS and police
chiefs presided over by Krueger. It is from these reports that a
picture begins to emerge on the course of the revolt.

In examining Stroop's reports one's attention is drawn to the
following statement that appears in his report: "The main
Jewish combat group in which participated also Polish bandits,
retreated already on the first or second day to a place called
Muranowska Square. There it was reinforced by a significant
number of Polish bandits. The group wanted to fortify itself in
every way possible in order to prevent us from penetrating. On
the roof of a concrete building they raised the Jewish flag and
the Polish flag, as a signal of war against us . In this
firefight with the bandits fell SS Untersturmfuehrere
Demke."

Stroop returns to this battle in his conversations with
Moczarski in the Warsaw prison cell: "The matter of the
flags was of great political and moral importance. It reminded
hundreds of thousands of the Polish cause, it excited them and
united the population of the General-Government, but especially
Jews and Poles. Flags and national colors are a means of combat
exactly as a rapid-fire weapon, like thousands of such weapons.
We all knew that - Heinrich Himmler, Krueger, and Hahn
[Obersturmbannfuehrer Ludwig Hahn, commander of the Security
Police in Warsaw]. The Reichsfuehrer [Himmler] bellowed into the
phone: 'Stroop, you must at all costs bring down those two
flags.'"

IT WAS in Muranowska Square and the neighboring houses on
Muranowski Street that ZZW fighters armed with rifles,
sub-machine guns, machine guns, and Molotov cocktails, had
established fortified positions and succeeded in holding up the
advance of the German forces during an entire day's fighting on
the second day of the revolt, April 20, 1943. It was the scene of
recurrent fierce battles between ZZW and Stroop's forces. This is
corroborated by testimony given after the war by a number of
Iwanski's men who participated in these battles.

Here heavy casualties were sustained by the ZZW, losing many
of its leading fighters. Apfelbaum and Rodal were mortally
wounded in fighting that raged on April 27 and 28. Iwanski's
brother, Edvard, fell in Muranowska Square, his son, Roman was
mortally wounded, and Iwanski himself was wounded during those
days.

Many years later, in 1993, a Polish woman, Alicja Kaczynska,
who had lived during the war on the even-numbered side of
Muranowski Street outside the ghetto, opposite ZZW headquarters,
published a book of war-time reminiscences, At The Gates Of Hell.
In it she recalls the flags the ZZW had raised over the ghetto.

"On the roof opposite we could see people coming and
going, and we could see that each of them was armed with some
kind of weapon. At one moment we witnessed an exceptional sight
on that roof - a blue-and-white flag and a red-and-white flag
were raised. We all cheered. Look! Look! The Jewish flag! The
Jews have taken Muranowska Square! Our voices echoed on the
stairs. We hugged each other, hugged and kissed."

After the war Edelman questioned Stroop in Mokotow prison,
asking him in which location aside from Muranowska Square there
had been fierce fighting. Stroop replied: "Today I cannot
say with the same precision as I said about Muranowska Square. I
also remember the Brush Factory, but I cannot retell it
precisely."

During the entire revolt there was fighting throughout the
ghetto by ZOB and ZZW fighters. The fiercest and possibly the
most important battle of the revolt, lasting several days, seems
to have been waged by ZZW in the area of Muranowska Square. Yet
the story of the heroic struggle in the Warsaw Ghetto, the myth
of Jewish heroism that has captured the imagination of so many,
has left little room for the participation of the fighters of the
ZZW in the revolt. Maybe this was inevitable, since none of the
leaders of the underground organized by Betar survived the
revolt.

TO THE best of our knowledge, after surviving the fighting at
Muranowska Square, Frenkel, together with some of his comrades,
fell in a battle with German troops and Polish police on May 11
in Warsaw. Apfelbaum and Rodal did not survive the revolt. Most
of the ZZW fighters, including all but one of its senior
commanders, were killed in the revolt. Kalman Mendelson, a former
officer in the Polish Army and one of the founders of ZZW, never
fully recovered from the wounds he sustained in the fighting at
Muranowska Square and in the Polish uprising in Warsaw in August
1944, and spent the rest of his life in Polish hospitals and
convalescent homes.

The story of the revolt has come down to us primarily through
two ZOB leaders who survived the fighting - Cukierman, who was
the ZOB's liasion to the Polish underground outside the ghetto
during the revolt, and Edelman. In his book, The Ghetto Fights,
published shortly after the war, Edelman makes no mention of the
ZZW in his description of the revolt. Cukierman, on arriving in
Israel after the war, spoke disparagingly of the ZZW, claiming
that they had left the ghetto on the third day of the revolt.

Political considerations appear to have colored their reports
of the fighting in the ghetto. Indicative of this is a report
sent by The Jewish National Committee in Warsaw to the London
Representation of Polish Jewry on May 24, 1944, signed by A.
Berman, Yitzhak Cukierman, Shimon Gottesman, and Yosef Sak, which
contains the following passage: "Let the Workers' Movement
throughout the world know that the organizers of the Warsaw
Ghetto revolt and its leadership were The Workers' Movement for
Labor Eretz Yisrael and that hundreds of the fighters struggled
and fell inspired by this ideal, so that their death will be one
of the foundations for a socialist future of the Jewish masses in
Eretz Yisrael."

For the ZZW there was nobody left to present their side of the
story.

Sixty years have passed since the outbreak of the revolt in
the Warsaw Ghetto. As it becomes a legend it should be freed of
political bias and made to conform as closely as possible to the
actual course of events. This is a debt we owe to the heroes of
the revolt.